Mindful motoring – addressing the stress with a little help from Dickens

I’m an impatient motorist, writes Craig Thomas. I’m not proud of it, but the careless and reckless drivers I encounter every day cause me to curse out loud. A lot.

A radio report the other week described Philippines President Duterte as being “famously foul-mouthed”. My wife immediately said: “I bet he’s not as bad as you in the car.” I had no rebuttal.

Thankfully, I never get to the stage of experiencing road rage because, like Taylor Swift, I just shake it off.

I know this because I recently spent 45 minutes wired up like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, driving around south-west London to test how our senses have an effect on our emotions when we drive.

The drive was part of a research project funded by Hyundai and conducted by a team led by consumer behaviour psychologist Patrick Fagan of Goldsmiths University London.

Well, apparently, I have normal levels of emotional intelligence, which means that I have a mixed emotional response to events inside and outside the car, but I quickly cope with negative emotions.

This is important to know, because emotional intelligence has emerged as the key to dealing with stress when driving. An increasing body of research shows that the more emotionally intelligent we are, the easier it is to cope with the inevitable tensions of driving around a small island on which we collectively cover 320bn miles on the road every year (according to new figures released by the Department for Transport).

Brits cover billions upon billions of miles in their cars every yearCredit:
Andrew Parsons/PA Wire

As Fagan told me: “There are certain stresses or experiences, like hearing beeping noises or drilling at road works, that will have an emotional impact on the driver. It might make people angry or scared. That is stress. However, that stress is then regulated or managed by the person, depending on how emotionally intelligent they are.”

I admit that I might have previously pooh-poohed the whole "emotional intelligence" thing as something that only lentil-munching, yoga-practising hippies are concerned with. But after talking to Fagan, I’m now considerably less dismissive – especially after he explained how more emotionally intelligent drivers, the latest research suggests, are less likely to have crashes, drink and drive or use a mobile phone while behind the wheel.

And the good news is that we can all increase our emotional intelligence, with a few simple exercises.

Reading good literary novels – anything by Dickens is especially recommended – is good for us, as is doing mental maths, being mindful (yes, I know, but bear with me here) by emptying your head and breathing deeply before setting off on a journey, and practising what advanced motorists call commentary driving, which involves scanning what’s in front of the vehicle and just saying out loud what you observe.

These exercises also help train the brain to not get overwhelmed with stress – which means we have less cognitive control of our actions and lead us to act impulsively. In a car, acting impulsively is usually a Bad Thing.

We’ll be getting more help in the future, too. Hyundai is also involved with developing start-ups that are developing new ways to enable cars of the future to help us de-stress. So, for example, we’ll be wearing clothing that monitors our heart rate and body temperature, which relays that data to our car, so it can select the correct ambient in-car lighting, the right music and release scents into the vehicle to either perk us up or relax us.

Stress is a serious problem among motorists, but we don’t have to let it ruin our driving experience (or, long-term, our health).

I, for one, will endeavour to become a more emotionally intelligent driver.